iCloud Explain like I’m 5–backing up iPhone photos to iCloud without downloading from iCloud

[bjjp2]

Hi. I tried to backup the photos on my phone to iCloud but what I ended up with was all of the iCloud photos on my phone. I don’t want that. I just want to backup the photos on my phone in iCloud not to “sync” then all. Can someone walk me through step by step?

 

[chrfr]

Hi. I tried to backup the photos on my phone to iCloud but what I ended up with was all of the iCloud photos on my phone. I don’t want that. I just want to backup the photos on my phone in iCloud not to “sync” then all. Can someone walk me through step by step?

ICloud really doesn’t work that way. At its core, it’s a sync service, not a backup service. You can turn on the “optimize” option for the photos app, and your phone will mostly only keep low resolution photos, but Apple doesn’t allow a way to put files on iCloud and not have them on the phone at all.

 

[bjjp2]

ICloud really doesn’t work that way. At its core, it’s a sync service, not a backup service. You can turn on the “optimize” option for the photos app, and your phone will mostly only keep low resolution photos, but Apple doesn’t allow a way to put files on iCloud and not have them on the phone at all.

That’s what I was afraid of. That’s pretty ridiculous. Thanks.

 

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[BrianBaughn]

This is one reason I use Google Photos (with a paid storage account). It has a much smaller storage footprint than Photos.